How to Attract Vendors to Your Marketplace: Top Seven Approaches

Vendor acquisition is one of the crucial aspects that will determine the success rate of any eCommerce website. Users who think about how to build a marketplace website will always intend to build marketplace websites like amazon, eBay, and many more. But understand the fact that without vendors you have nothing to do with your marketplace website. So more attention is needed to study how to approach vendors for eCommerce

Why it’s Worth Attracting Vendors First

Availability of a wide range of products is the main reason people visit any marketplace platform. Around 60% of online buyers will first check the number of products that the ecommerce website holds before they decide to buy a product from them.To gain numerous products you need to attract more vendors first. Apart from this fact there are many more reasons to get vendors to sell on your website.

Vendors show more interest in joining the marketplace

 There is always a search for a reliable marketplace platform from vendors’ side. Vendors know the importance of online platforms and their necessity. There is no risk for vendors to join in any marketplace. So attracting them towards your ecommerce store is not a big deal.

Gaining more traffic to the platform is quite easy

When you start acquiring vendors, you can get their customers to your ecommerce marketplace platform easily. So attracting vendors to ecommerce websites is worthwhile as you may not need to spend in marketing your marketplace to gain more traffic and get more customers. Vendors will take care of this part as they want to sell their products and earn profit.

Focus on key vendors and get them in your platform

To attract vendors to your online marketplace, all you need is to make reputed vendors to join in your marketplace platform. This will automatically attract other small vendors easily to your online platform and you can gain their trust with less effort.

How to Attract Vendors to your Marketplace

Recent survey reveals that Amazon holds more than 9.7 million sellers and this number is increasing every day. Have you ever thought about how to approach vendors to your eCommerce website like Amazon? This is the right time to think about various aspects that will help you to attract vendors to your online marketplace.

Approach #1. Offer Better Conditions for Vendors

Provide a comfortable working space for vendors that will make them stay with your marketplace for a long time. Offer them better conditions that will meet out their demands and will make them stay comfortable in your marketplace platform. Better conditions are suggested below.

• Offering lower fees that are to be deducted as commission
• Provide more monetization sources to increase their earnings.
• Initially offer them free trials and make them first sell their products.
• Provide insurance and make them feel secured.

Approach #2. Simplify the Process of Running a Business

Keep in mind that vendors who get into your marketplace are not always technically strong. Even a common man can be a vendor, who may not know anything about the functioning of the online marketplace. So you need to simplify the working process of the platform. This is possible by following the below mentioned techniques.

• Provide them an easily understandable dashboard to know their business operations.
• Support them through automated inventory management to handle their stocks efficiently.
• Have a simplified order management system that will help them to have hassle-free order processing.
• Let your vendors categorize their products and make it visible to the audience for better conversion.

Approach #3. Help Vendors Sell More

Vendors alone cannot increase their sales. They need external support from your online marketplace. You need to help them in achieving more sales. The below mentioned features need to be added in your marketplace platform to get vendors to sell on your website.

• Let your vendors have sales labels that can attract more audience to their page.
• Allow vendors to add products in bulk and let them save time and increase their productivity.
• Provide them a mobile-optimized platform as 93% of buyers prefer mobile responsive platforms to buy products.

Approach #4. Ensure Smooth Migration

Gaining the attention of vendors who are already committed to other platforms is quite a challenging one. While transferring them to your marketplace, ensure smooth migration that will not affect their data. They should not lose any of their data as it is very difficult to build the same again. Follow the below mentioned steps for better platform migration.

• Have functionality that will automatically shift vendors’ data, products, catalogue to your platform.
• Ensure vendors about how confidentially the data will be maintained in your platform.
• Allow them to utilize your content management system to display the products with better description.

Approach #5. Contact Vendors on Similar Platforms

This process is quite easy and can get more vendors on your platform. All you need is to analyze your competitors and checkout vendors who are not satisfied with the website. You can easily grab their attention and bring them to your marketplace. Follow the simple steps to attract vendors to your ecommerce website.

• Display the benefits that they will enjoy when they join your platform.
• Provide them with a better commission plan that will get them more profit.
• Share your existing vendors’ testimony that will genuinely attract vendors to your marketplace platform.

Approach #6. Create a Blog to Educate Vendors

Through blogs you can easily entertain and also educate users. Give more information about your marketplace platform through effective blogs. This will give a clear picture about your working functionality and this may also impress other vendors to get into your online marketplace platform. In your blog make sure you have the below mentioned details.

• Let your blog speak about your reputation and your brand awareness.
• You can also mention your sales and revenue you earn in approximate figures.
• Also let others know about your current offers and discounts you have.

Approach #7. Analyze who your Top Vendors are

45% of marketplace platforms suffer in retaining their vendors for a long period. This is mainly because we fail to analyze their experience with our marketplace. Some vendors may be satisfied, others may not. You need to find out who are not satisfied and should take necessary steps to gain their trust.

• Track each vendor’s performance and find out who is performing low.
• Give additional offers to low performing vendors and make them sell more.
• Get regular feedback and ratings from your existing vendors to enhance your marketplace performance.

Final Thoughts

Hope you understood the key role of vendors and how to attract and retain them with your marketplace platform. To build a marketplace like amazon, eBay, you should be ready to face more challenges and should confront them. Build a perfect marketplace platform and get more vendors and become a leading platform in this digital floor.